Sigma-Aldrich and Retarus Found the Right Chemistry

Key Global Communication Processes

With offices in around 40 countries and over 1.4 million customers worldwide, the Sigma-Aldrich Corporation relies on smooth communication processes and close customer relations at every level. Sigma-Aldrich has chosen Retarus for two core aspects of its communication processes involving overseas customers and partners: EDI and fax from SAP R/3. These two solutions may not seem to have much in common at first glance, but they are both of critical importance to Sigma-Aldrich’s global activities.

Integrate Overseas Customers into Business Processes

Sigma-Aldrich and Retarus successfully partnered in 2002 with an EDI project when Sigma-Aldrich was looking for a partner to seamlessly replace their existing service provider and ensure a stable live EDI environment within just 14 working days. In response to the booming market in China, Sigma-Aldrich and Retarus developed a joint EDI solution that allowed Sigma-Aldrich to easily integrate Chinese customers into their system. Based on the success of this project, Sigma-Aldrich chose Retarus for the fax management of its R/3 system.

Integrating More Than 100 Customers Located in 13 Different Countries

Sigma-Aldrich’s ERP system connected to Retarus’ data centers via FTP over VPN to integrate customers located all over the world. Retarus then implemented additional protocols – SMTP and X.400 – for Sigma’s EDI partners, set up interfaces for the EDIFACT and CSV target formats, and provided mapping for all processes. Retarus completed the Cloud EDI integration within the stipulated two-week deadline, and provided all documentation in addition to comprehensive testing. Chinese customers were connected without a glitch, despite the fact that some orders contained Chinese characters. Retarus found a solution to convert these important orders to SAP-IDoc format without loss of content and also created a workflow for turnaround documents including Chinese characters in an Excel format.